Distributed.net Client Used to Find Stolen Computers
from the unintended-benefits dept
This one is completely random. Apparently, two stolen computers were recovered, because they were running distributed.net’s RC5 client. The client, of course, when running has to occasionally connect to the distributed.net servers to upload and download new keys. In doing so, distributed.net could figure out what IP the user was coming from, trace it back to the ISP, and from there to the specific user. What I’m wondering is how folks realized to contact distributed.net for this purpose. I doubt I would have thought of it if my machine were stolen.
